Towards a Cesare Pavese Title

(Verrà la Morte e Avrà i Tuoi Occhi)

Death will come and it will wear your eyes.

Death demands the handover of your eyes.

Death eyes you, stares you in the face.

Then death assumes the running of your eyes.

Death powders cheeks, shadows eyes.

Death would take the eyes out of your head.

Death will seize your assets, cut off your eye supply.

Death lashes out at your defenceless eyes.

You are up to your eyes in death.

Death takes after you, eyes the image of yours.

You would recognise death with your eyes shut.

Death will give you dagger glances, evil eyes.

Death makes eye contact at last.

Death will come and it will steal your looks.

Dennis O’Driscoll’s fifth collection contains poems in which his cool and unflinching vision lends a pungent originality to his treatment of love and death as well as to subjects as diverse – and improbable – as economic boom, business travel and Alzheimer’s disease. By contrast, the book also contains more lyrical and personal poems, including the tender and evocative childhood sequence with which the collection ends. Weather Permitting follows O’Driscoll’s widely praised Quality Time (1997) which contained his celebrated long poem, ‘The Bottom Line’, described by Alan Brownjohn in The Sunday Times as ‘devastatingly accurate, and scary’.